Thursday, September 22, 2016

Tourism FINALLY falls in August

In August of 2015 there were 367K Chinese tourists, and last month 299K. Either way there's a huge drop. The Hong Kong number actually rose by 3K over August of 2015. Overall tourism was up over the previous month, but down year on year, because of the drop in Chinese tourists. Tourists from most other countries/regions, including Japan and SE Asia, are on the rise. Hence, at some point, that rise will swamp the Chinese tourist drop-off, and the tourism protests will become just another quaint pro-Blue whine.

Thus, August is the first month of 2016 in which the total number of tourists from China (excluding HKK + Macao) was less than in 2015. Through July they had been running ahead of 2015 slightly.
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4 comments:

The whole tourism number thing is multi-faceted. Hong Kong is also seeing a steep drop of Chinese tourists. A recent article in the globaltimes on the upcoming Golden Week has this to say

"While trips to Japan and South Korea are growing more popular, Chinese travelers have been increasingly turning their backs on the once popular destinations of Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Jason Wong, chairman of the Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong, made a pessimistic prediction about the number of mainland visitors who would travel to Hong Kong during the National Day holidays when he said only 200 to 300 tour groups would visit Hong Kong every day, the Hong Kong-based newspaper Wenweipo reported on Sunday.

Wong attributed the decline to the fact that other destinations had loosened visa policies for Chinese tourists.

Zhang Lingyun, director of the Tourism Development Academy said that he believed the development of other holiday destinations along with stepped-up marketing efforts by South Korea and Japan have also resulted in fewer travelers going to Hong Kong and Taiwan."

While political retaliation is possible there are obviously many factors at work.

HOT! HOT! HOT!

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